


like darkness lies in wait

by heavensabove



Series: anika trevelyan & her circumstances [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Confrontations, F/M, Morning After, like...extreme drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:00:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24240961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavensabove/pseuds/heavensabove
Summary: She had washed his physical presence away long ago, but how will she wash this off?
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Blackwall/Female Trevelyan
Series: anika trevelyan & her circumstances [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749697
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	like darkness lies in wait

**Author's Note:**

> [This](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hmAg7CQwZQVH4ieS2CBAsO3bU-QyLhSl) [is](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hkAiEV_4T8FMLlm3-YYWC0VPZM7-ubbb) [who](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hoy1hhqkPHmqnrN9lR_OA9Oc0r8GhX75) is angsting in this fic. I love her and I hope you do too.

She awakens suddenly, eyes flickering open, throat bone dry. Her mind is fuzzy, her body aching, and the furs covering her aren’t much of a protection against the draft coming into the loft.

But none of that bothers her as much as the empty space beside her.

Anika scrambles to sit up, searching the room, calling out for Blackwall. Her voice sounds small in her own ears. In a split second, the haze of sleep gives way to anxiety. Her stomach flips when her eyes land on the badge.

It’s the only thing where he should be. Her fingers curl into the fur inches from it. She looks away, a lump in her throat. Outside, the sky is brightening, and all is cast in dull shades of blue and gray.

She waits for too long for any number of pleasant explanations to prove themselves true. That he’s washing up and will return, surprised to find her awake and apologetic for leaving. That she’ll hear his voice as he speaks to Master Dennet, to the mounts or hums to himself as he practices his woodwork.

Sunlight falls on her. She finally moves, pushing the furs away, the semen and light trickle of blood staining her inner thighs warming her cheeks. She feels awkward, her movements slow and hesitant. Her clothes are in a pile beside Blackwall’s bed; his are, of course, gone.

She stares at the floor as she dresses, fumbling fingers doing and re-doing buttons and clasps. It feels odd now to be in her body, her  _ own skin _ , suddenly so out of her control, so changed. She’s always despised the assumptions of purity and innocence that came with her lack of experience, and still she feels nothing of that sort was ‘taken’ from her.

But the decision to share herself with someone else has altered something. It’s frightening because it’s never happened before, not even when the Mark tore a hole in her hand and forced her into a life she had never imagined she would live. She’s always been sure of herself, known who she is and where she stands.

What can she possibly do now? She sits on folded legs for minutes, looking around and waiting for something to happen. Her hair falls over her face and brushes her neck, the hairtie she uses to hold it all back lost somewhere in the hay. She tucks it behind her ears as she turns to peer out the window.

Some people are milling about, not as many as there will be later in the day, none of them who she wants to see.

Anika crawls off the bed and stands unsteadily. She begins to walk and stops, bare feet crunching on loose hay. She picks up her boots from the other side of the bed and as she’s lacing them up her eyes fall on a stack of parchment on the opposite side of the room.

She walks slowly to them, picking them up swiftly, as nonchalantly as she can. They’re not from Blackwall. She’s relieved and disappointed.

She lays the letters down, then a creak from behind makes her start and whip around, the impossibility of it being Blackwall apparent to her even before she sees the crow lazily picking at straw.

She bites her lip and turns back, making her way timidly down the pathway and the stairs.

The Dracolisk she’s been riding recently huffs in its stall. She’s glad that Master Dennet is nowhere in sight; she’s not sure what she would tell him, what excuse she could come up with that would explain why she’s coming down from the loft so disheveled and so early.

She’s less glad that there’s no sign of Blackwall either, though she knew deep down to expect it. There’s a sick, sinking feeling in her gut, her throat so parched it feels like it will close and suffocate her.

She tries to collect herself, leaning on the work table where Blackwall’s unfinished griffon rocker sits, its carved eyes staring at her blankly. She consoles herself with more pleasant explanations, that even if Blackwall has been insensitive, leaving her alone and naked and  _ vulnerable _ , he’s just gone somewhere close by. She’ll find him in the tavern, or sparring with Cassandra, or trading jokes with Iron Bull.

Then she sees it.

The parchment is neatly folded and pinned to the griffon’s side. Anika takes it with shaky hands, seeing the imprint of the words written within. For what seems like an age, she can’t bring herself to open it. In her head, his voice is teasing her lightly, a memory so recent yet so far from her now:  _ We’d surely have cleared this area faster, my lady, had you not stopped to read every piece of paper you found lying on the ground! _

She wants to hold onto such things, gentle jokes that betrayed his affection, fingers hovering over her injuries and sounds catching in his throat, disbelieving smiles at her flirtations. Whatever she’s about to read, she knows in her heart that it will rend all of that.

She unfolds his letter. Her eyes burn, every word a wound. She crumples the parchment without intending to, holding it against her chest as the pain washes over her.

* * *

“The spymaster has confirmed it. Blackwall is gone.”

Anika has numbed herself enough to be able to stare unflinchingly at the runner, as if she’s assessing information on a random agent. It matters little that this man probably knows, as almost all of Skyhold does, that Blackwall means so much more to her.

“Find him.” She says, her voice steely. “He’s needed here.”

The runner hands her information that, at the moment, might as well be ancient Elven glyphs. Execution. Mornay. Val Royeaux. All she comprehends is that Blackwall is going to be there and her feet are moving before she realizes she’s going to be, as well.

“You’re not going alone.” Varric stops her as she’s returning from her quarters, clad in her blood red armor.

Then Sera is at the door, all sarcasm and irritation that can’t quite hide her concern. The decision to take Cole is made when he appears out of nowhere at the stables, staring at Anika with solemn eyes. She is shrewd; he will tell her things Blackwall won’t.

* * *

She has a scream in her throat that she won’t allow to leave. Varric lays a hand on her shoulder; his sympathy feels like a hot dagger in her back.

“Thought he had gone to die, worried sick in her stomach, twisting and turning and now she wishes he had, so much worse, so much worse now, lying in a bed made of lies.”

“Stop that, you fucking weirdo!” Sera snarls, voice burdened with sorrow she won’t express.

Any other time and Anika would’ve admonished her. Now she wants to take her frustrations out on poor Cole too, tear into him because she has nothing else to blame this on.

Her mother had always warned her that, sooner or later, she would make herself a victim of her own nature. This stubbornness that grated against her place in life even as she tried to accept it, that drove her when everything she knew was upended.

Blackwall had been a dream, warning her at every step of his impossibility. The more he evaded her, the more she hung on, sinking her teeth into him, allowing him to devour her whole. Strong, protective, noble. Soft kisses and warm hands on her waist.

Shattered in an instant.  _ Not Blackwall. Never Blackwall. _

Thom Rainier feels odd. Her tongue can’t form it yet, just as her mind can’t process that it was this man she had allowed inside her heart and body. A man she knows not even barely, a stranger in the skin of someone she had trusted.

A murderer. With  _ children’s _ blood on his hands.

She had washed his physical presence away long ago, but how will she wash this off?

“Do you…want to see him?” Varric asks softly.

Anika closes her eyes.

“Yes.”

* * *

The more she stares at him, the more she hears his voice again, the less she wants to accept. Some strange hope rises in her chest, a laughable little notion that she can’t keep from tumbling out of her mouth.

“Did you really do those things?” she asks desperately. “I don’t want to believe you’re a murderer.”

His head hangs low, all his bravado vanished. His throat works as he listens.

“Believe it. It’s all true.” His voice trembles. “Take a good look at who I really am.”

Anika grits her teeth.

“I lied to you. That’s all there is to say about it.”

“ _ Why _ did you lie?”

“I never meant to. I didn’t…I had lied to everyone for so long. I had lied even to myself, for so long…I couldn’t take it back in time.”

“And so you ran? Did you really think I wouldn’t find you?”

“I had to face justice for what I’ve done.” he says, his tone becoming sharper. “I could not live that lie any longer. I could not build a life with you based on it. And I had hoped you wouldn’t find me, that you’d just think I was gone.” He deflates, shoulders sagging even further. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

The selfishness of it all hits her like a fireball. Suddenly, she’s bristling, her pain is flowing out of her like lava. Restraint that she so prizes leaves her in a snap.

“You wanted me to think you left me?!” she says and he flinches at her tone. “That you were dead or worse? You’d  _ break my heart _ and call it better?”

Something snaps in him too, and the force of it makes her stumble back. He rattles the bars of his cage, anguish etched on his face, his haunted eyes burning holes through her.

He spells his crimes out, as if it’s him rather than her who needs to hear again. He calls himself a monster. As she watches him sink to his knees, she begins to understand how broken he was all along. That Blackwall’s identity was the only thing holding him together.

“Wouldn’t you be happier thinking I was a noble man, a Grey Warden, instead of this?” he says. “I would’ve saved you the pain of learning that all you knew about me was a lie. That you  _ loved _ a lie.”

A long silence settles in the air between them. Anika stares at him and his bowed head; all she wants to do is sink to the floor, too. She wants everything to stop, she wants  _ stillness _ but her heart is thumping against her ribcage, her blood is coursing rapidly through her veins.

“No.” she shakes her head. “A monster wouldn’t have turned himself in. A monster wouldn’t feel remorse. There  _ is _ good in you. What we had…” she bites down on her lip, tears stinging her eyes. “There was truth to what we had. I have to believe that.”

* * *

She’s running away and Cullen stops her. She’s suspended between the damp darkness of the cells and the fresh air of Val Royeaux, so tightly wound that she can hardly hold still even as she turns and trains herself to be Inquisitor again.

“I have Leliana’s report on Thom Rainier.”

Anika takes the document Cullen holds out and stares at it. “So she had this all along?” she says with a slight, bitter laugh. “And she never thought to mention it to me?”

“We all made this mistake.” Cullen says curtly. Anika realizes how accusatory she had sounded. “Leliana had no reason to connect a traitor from Orlais to a Warden wandering the Hinterlands. He had us thoroughly fooled, and you in particular.”

Anika breathes in sharply, the last words coming down on her like a sword blow. Cullen’s face softens.

“I…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have–”

“I lashed out first. I shouldn’t have said that about Leliana. You’re right.” Anika composes herself as much as she can before continuing. “Summarize the report for me, please.”

Cullen complies, relaying the information that’s already been burned into her brain. After finishing, he pauses awkwardly, studying her face. He sighs.

“What do we do now? Blackw– _ Rainier _ has accepted his fate, but you don’t have to. We have resources. If he’s released to us, you may pass judgment on him yourself.”

Anika looks at Cullen for a moment, thoughts whirling in her head.

“If it were up to you, what would happen?” she asks quietly.

“What he did to the men under his command was unacceptable. He betrayed their trust. Betrayed  _ ours _ . I despise him for it.”

Anika can’t help the hot flash of pain that courses through her at his words. Cullen is right, but that man still has her heart, and she’s afraid the next thing out of Cullen’s mouth will be that she should leave Rainier to rot or worse, execute him herself.

But her commander hesitates, conflict visible in his eyes. “And yet he fought as a Warden. Joined the Inquisition. Gave his blood for our cause. And the moment he shakes off his past, he turns around and owns up to it.  _ Why _ ?”

Anika doesn’t trust herself to reply with a steady voice. Deep down, she knows  _ she _ was the catalyst, her love that he felt so unworthy of pushing him to do something that’d make him worthy.

That it would also rip him away had mattered less.

She looks at Cullen, not really caring if he can see the tears gathering in her eyes. “He wanted to change.”

“And how he has. Saving Mornay took courage.”

“It was…brave of him to confess.” she says softly, the last word coming out in a near-whisper.

Cullen waits a moment before speaking again. “What should we do, Inquisitor?”

Anika just breathes for a while, her eyes on the floor and gaze fixed nowhere. She shouldn’t be making any decisions...yet there is no other decision she can make.

There’ll be no life for her that doesn’t have him in it.

* * *

She closes the door to her quarters and makes her way up the stairs on shaky legs.

He’ll hate what she’s done, how she’s chosen to do it. He’ll have to understand that she really had no choice.

She’s at the top of the stairs, in her dark room. Tired to the bone. She can hear a few men laughing outside somewhere, the heavy hum of a crowd, faint shouts of soldiers on a drill. The world keeps turning in Skyhold but time is still for her until he’s brought back.

With effort, Anika undresses, trying to avoid the mirror, trying to avoid looking too much at her bare skin, thankful for the lack of light.

She fetches her nightclothes, pulling them over her head. Her bare feet make soft sounds on the carpet as she makes her way to her bed. She grips the edge when she reaches it, whatever strength she still had leaving her. She sits so she won’t fall.

It starts slow, a dim whimper in her throat. She’s been fighting her tears for too long, pushing them down; now they spill out in rivulets, having won at last. The whimpers begin to escape, growing louder until they’re sobs, until her body is shaking and heaving with the force of them.

She lies down, curling into a ball, and buries her face in her blanket. For hours, she cries, breaking apart in a way she never has before. The night shelters her as she grieves, and sleep arrives only with day.

She remains as this, hovering between pieces and holding together, sick with longing and guilt, until a runner knocks on her door four afternoons later, holding a missive from Leliana.

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from [this here poem](https://twitter.com/OldTamilPoetry/status/1242492740081864705).


End file.
